


The Old Man and the Police Box

by RowenaZahnrei



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gallifrey, Gen, Imagination, Journal of Impossible Things, Self-Discovery, The Doctor's Childhood, The Doctor's House, The Doctor's Name, The Doctor's past, Time Lords, scifi, self-awareness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-04-28 22:58:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 13,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5108744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowenaZahnrei/pseuds/RowenaZahnrei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1913, schoolteacher John Smith submitted an unusual story, "The Old Man and the Police Box," to a local boys' magazine. Out of print for over a century, it tells of an eccentric inventor from the land of Gallifrey who steals a miraculous time ship...</p><p>A peek into John Smith's "Journal of Impossible Things," as edited and annotated by Rowena Zahnrei.  COMPLETE! :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Old Man and the Police Box

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who in any shape, form, or manifestation. Please don't sue me or steal my story. Thanks! :)

The Old Man and the Police Box  
From the writings of Dr. John Smith  
Edited by Rowena Zahnrei

Long, long ago in the distant future there lived a silver-haired old man who stole a Police Box. He did this for several reasons.

The old man was an inventor. He imagined new and wondrous things no one had seen before, then built them in his laboratory. He was a scientist and an engineer and a pioneer in every field he studied.

But in the strange and distant land in which he lived, imaginations as marvelous as his were very rare. His ideas were considered by many to be eccentric, even dangerous, and so he had few friends. As clever as he was, this man was very lonely. So he decided to run away.

The old man's world was a wonderful place with spires and citadels, impressive lords and imposing ladies. But to his inventor's mind, his people were boring and stuck-in-the-mud. Things rarely changed because there was no one to question, no one to wonder whether things could be made better than they were. No one but him. It was only later that he realized this sorry state of affairs was largely due to the fact that the Gallifreyans, as his people were called, had no children.

It was not always that way. Countless ages ago, the Gallifreyans had been a primitive people. They delighted in tormenting those they considered to be lesser than themselves. But, because they were also lazy and had no desire to leave their world to collect their victims, they invented incredible machines they would use to scoop people off their home planets and drop them in their gaming arena. Once there, the Gallifreyans would force their victims to face dangerous and frightening tasks for their amusement. The Gallifreyans called them intelligence tests. They treated their captives no better than laboratory animals, and most of them did not survive.

This was a shameful period in the history of the land of Gallifrey, commonly called a time of chaos. Life in those times was short–only a brief span of seven or eight decades–and the Gallifreyans were forced to have children to ensure the survival of their race and knowledge.

Out of this primitive society emerged three great leaders who stood out from all the rest. The two greatest were called Rassilon and Omega. The third was a mysterious figure known only as the Other.

Rassilon had an idea. He believed it was possible for a Gallifreyan to travel backwards and forwards not only in space, but also in time. Working with his friends, Omega and the mysterious Other, he invented a marvelous ship. This ship was not built in the ordinary fashion; rather it was grown on a great frame. Because there had to be a lot of room inside the ship, the three men invented a way to make a lot of space fit into it. And because it had to travel in time, they made it so that the ship could vanish from one place and reappear in another at anywhere and anywhen they desired.

To make this kind of travel possible required a lot of energy. Omega declared he could provide that energy by flying into a star. This he did, but the energy he released was so great it consumed him, ship and all. The Gallifreyans could now travel in time and space, but the cost had been the life of one of their greatest leaders.

With Omega gone, the mind of Rassilon began to turn. He had long passed middle age by this time, and he feared his death was near. He also feared what would happen to his people once he was gone. The ability to travel in time had not pacified the population as they had hoped. Instead, it had only provided them access to new and different victims to torment. And so, Rassilon came up with a new idea.

Rassilon and the mysterious Other were very clever men. Working together, they came up with a way for a Gallifreyan to live not one life, but thirteen. All it would take was some careful manipulation of biology. In this way, they gave their people another heart, a physical and mental connection to the temporal plane, and made it possible for them to start another life when they died. They did this in the hope that by removing the fear of death and time, the people would settle into a life of peace and happiness.

But the Gallifreyans were still primitive in their minds and behavior. Although they could now live for centuries, they were reluctant to give up their old habits. Children continued to be born, increasing the population at an alarming rate. Something had to be done.

And so, Rassilon came up with yet another idea. But this time, he was alone. Unlike Rassilon and Omega, the mysterious Other was known to have a family. Now approaching old age, the Other had become quite set in his ways, as old men are wont to do. He therefore refused to accept a second heart and an extended life and resigned from public service, resolving to live out his remaining days with his wife and granddaughter.

Rassilon toiled in his private laboratory for several years before his invention was complete. He called it a Loom, and it was a revolution. No longer would Gallifreyans be forced to have children to ensure the survival of their race and culture. Instead, when a Gallifreyan reached the end of his or her thirteenth life, he or she would be replaced by a biological Cousin grown in the Loom. These Cousins would emerge from the Loom fully grown and with the potential to live thirteen lives, but their minds would be like those of children. After several years of schooling, they would be ready to take their place in society.

Every Gallifreyan Family was assigned a Loom, which contained knowledge of their basic biology. When one Family member died, the Loom was activated and a new Family member emerged. In this way, the population soon leveled off and remained constant. And to ensure it would remain so, Rassilon secretly worked into the Looms an instruction. Gallifreyans now lived too long to be saddled with spouses and children, he reasoned. He, himself, had never been fond of children with all their noise and their pestering questions. To his mind, the Looms had made all that type of fuss and bother unnecessary. And so it was that no children were born on Gallifrey from that day on.

In the millennia to come, this would become known as the Curse of the Gallifreyans: to live a life of pure intellect, forever, without ever knowing the kind of all-consuming love that can shrink the universe down to a single, cherished smile…Always alone, always objective, never allowed to connect…

It was around this time that Rassilon and the mysterious Other had a mysterious falling out. To the people of Gallifrey, Rassilon was their greatest hero, the benefactor of their race. The Other, however, believed that Rassilon's power and fame had gone to his head. They had a fight in public, and the mysterious Other was forced to flee the city. When he tried to return, Rassilon declared him a traitor and a danger to the peace and ordered his arrest.

The old inventor was present that day. True, he was from the distant future, but when he had run away he had stolen an abandoned time ship and decided to go traveling to see his world's legendary past. And so it was that he was there to witness the Other's last act of defiance against the new order of Rassilon.

In the inventor's time, the Other was seen as a terrible evil. He was an enemy of Rassilon and Omega, constantly working to hinder the great men who had freed the Gallifreyans from their primitive existence. Now, to his great amazement, the inventor discovered this was not the truth at all. The Other was not evil. He merely was not afraid to speak out against Rassilon's ideas.

The Other feared that Rassilon's Looms would cause the Gallifreyans of the future to stagnate. He believed their culture would cease to change and grow because, without children or the fear of death to spur them towards discovery, the people would cease to change and grow. The inventor had seen the future, and knew this to be the truth. His was a world without the ties of deep familial, filial, and matrimonial love. In his experience, all he had known was the distant, polite affection of his Cousins. Deep in his hearts, he found, to his surprise, that he was envious of what the Other had. But he was wise enough to understand that if he tried to intervene on the Other's behalf, he would be doomed to share his fate.

After being chased from Rassilon's great palace, the Other first returned to his home. Knowing his end was near, he kissed his wife a final time and made a promise to his beloved granddaughter. He promised her that, one day, he would return for her. He told her that, although he may look different when he arrived, she would be able to recognize him nonetheless.

Then, taking leave of his family, the Other went to the House where the first Loom was kept; the prototype built by Rassilon himself. This Loom had been given to a very old and prominent Family, a Family Rassilon believed would be sure to keep it in prime and pristine condition. As Rassilon's guards closed in, the Other leapt into that Loom, where his biological material was immediately unraveled into its component atoms.

The inventor, who had hidden himself among the gawping crowds, was stunned beyond measure to realize he knew that Loom. It was the Loom from which he himself had been spooled. And now, for the first time, certain things began to come clear.

By this act, the Other had apparently, for all intents and purposes, become his direct biological ancestor–and perhaps more, even, than that. The inventor had always felt he was different from his fellow Gallifreyans. His Family had long held a reputation for producing eccentrics, and he had often been mocked at school as being Theta Sigma—the cream of the crop.

And now the inventor realized that he could not return to his own time. More to the point, he didn't want to. He had a time ship. He had his curiosity and an inventive mind. He wasn't meant to live out his lives trapped in a cycle of routine and ritual. What he wanted, more than anything else, was to explore.

Leaving the buzzing crowds behind, the inventor began the trek back to his stolen ship. On the way, he came across a young girl. This girl had dark hair and dark eyes and a small, elfin face the old man found somehow familiar. He looked at her and she looked at him for a long, long time. When she embraced him, he wasn't surprised to find his arms warmly returning the hug. And when she called him grandfather, he smiled and took her by the hand.

"I'm just on my way to London," he told her as he opened the door to his ship. "It is a place I've read much about and have long desired to see for myself. Would you care to accompany me, my child?"

The girl agreed and chose a year and the time ship appeared in London in the center of a junkyard. Upon landing, the ornery machine, which the girl christened the TARDIS, took upon itself the shape of an old blue Police Box, and no amount of coaxing would convince it to change. And so it was that the old man and his young granddaughter traveled to London in a stolen Police Box. It was the first of what were to become many, many impossible adventures.

John Smith  
Hulton Academy for Boys  
Farringham, Norfolk  
April, 1913


	2. The Watch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Editor's Note:   
> The following excerpt was originally accompanied by several detailed drawings of a watch. The watch's casing was engraved with intricate swirling designs. Beside the watch was scrawled a warning. It was written in a slightly firmer hand than the rest of the passage and the style was less deliberate, but the handwriting was still recognizable as Smith's own. The warning read: "Keep me secret… Keep me safe…"

The Watch

Strange thing. I have this image in my head. It's the image of a sphere, red, about the size of a cricket ball. Disguised, altered somehow to appear a common fob watch. Impossible, of course, but whatever it is, this object is filled with tiny intelligent machines, machines so small they cannot be seen by the Human eye. Nanites, they're called. At least that is the term that comes to mind. And the information they contain is unimaginably powerful. Biodata. Another peculiar word. The Biodata of a Time Lord...

John Smith  
Journal of Impossible Things


	3. The Goddess

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Editor's Note:  
> When describing his dreams, John Smith often made reference to a blue box, an object reminiscent of the police box belonging to his invented character The Doctor. The following entry is significant because it marks the only time he included in his reference a description of a woman. Oddly, this entry was accompanied by a rough sketch of the broken face of a grandfather clock, under which Smith had scrawled the words: "Trapped. She sleeps in a state of temporal grace..."

The Goddess

She comes to me in dreams. This beautiful woman. Dark hair, dark eyes, ancient, mysterious. She leans over my bed in the night, whispers in my ear. A strange language, sweet and melodic, familiar on a level so deep as to be inaccessible. The language is one of numbers, but it is more than that. The calculations are half-sung, forming images complex and powerful. She speaks to the deepest part of myself and, when she fades, I feel bereft. Alone and ordinary once more. And I wonder, why would this timeless goddess speak to me?

A tall box, blue and battered. Within, there is a glow. It is the glow of the goddess, and she is waiting. Watching. 

Could it be that she is lonely too?

John Smith  
Journal of Impossible Things


	4. The Legend of Salyavin Pt I: The Hermit of Gallifrey

The Legend of Salyavin Part I: The Hermit of Gallifrey  
From the writings of Dr. John Smith  
Edited by Rowena Zahnrei

There was once a hermit from the mountains of South Gallifrey. This hermit lived alone, as hermits generally do. He had lived alone for centuries, enjoying a quiet, contemplative life far removed from the hustle, pomp, and ceremony of the Citadel.

The Citadel was the planet's great capital city where most of the population made their homes. They lived packed together in elegant, towering buildings, sheltered from the world and the universe beyond by a vast transparent dome.

The Gallifreyans were observers, academics who sought, not to further knowledge, but to preserve what was already known. They prided themselves on their detachment and followed a policy of strict non-interference in universal affairs. There was nothing they didn't know, and precious little that was beyond their control. High in their spired towers, they lived apart and aloof from the unpredictable whims of nature and were reliant on advanced machines that catered to their every comfort.

Once, very very long ago, the people of Gallifrey had been active explorers, thriving on debate and the pursuit of knowledge. But after ten million years of time and space travel, those niggling questions of history and science that had once provoked such fiery academic disputes had all been answered, all the curiosities and wonders of the universe had been observed and documented. With nothing left to aspire to, no questions left to ask, no diseases left to cure, and no frontiers left to explore, the people of Gallifrey had fallen back on the comfort of tradition and ritual, allowing their society to sink into complacency and petty political intrigue. Change became something to fear, and any challenge to the accepted norm was quickly and firmly quashed.

Every person on the planet, whether they lived in the Citadel or in the few settlements beyond, shared the same culture and language, followed the same code of conduct, and believed in the same things. Their offspring were spooled from Looms and sent away to school at an early age, where they were taught to drink in new information like unquestioning sponges. They accepted things as they were and only rarely wondered why or how they'd come to be. They bowed to the authority of their elders and, when it came time to take their place in society, their position was dictated by the House and Family to which they belonged.

Gallifrey had a very strict social hierarchy that extended to the political. It was headed by the Lord President and the members of the High Council. All of these leaders were members of Gallifrey's most elite and revered social class, the Time Lords: graduates of the famous Academy of Gallifrey. As suggested by their title, the Time Lords were the self-styled guardians of Time. With their enhanced senses and keen intelligence, the Time Lords meticulously ensured that the flow of time remained on its proper track, undisturbed by anomalous incongruities or other irksome harbingers of chaos. They worked to ensure the established events of History were never tampered with or changed.

The Time Lords alone had the ability to travel in time, because only they were given the mental and physical attributes required to control a time capsule. They undertook such trips only in cases of dire emergency, however, since, like most Gallifreyans, they disdained to leave their calm, cloistered little world for any extended period. And even then, when their attempts to protect or repair the timeline of a planet forced them to interact with other species they usually did so in an indirect or even clandestine manner, since interference in foreign affairs was strictly forbidden by Gallifreyan law. Few among them even chose to venture out into the wilderness beyond their own Citadel, and those that did were often scorned upon their return. The handful of Gallifreyans who chose to make their home in the outer wastes were derided by the city-dwellers as Outsiders or Shobogans, and widely portrayed as common hooligans with no respect for order or decency.

The old hermit was not a Shobogan, but like them he was shunned as a pariah among respectable society. He had been a Time Lord himself once, many lifetimes ago, but had long since become disillusioned with the pompous pretension and endless ceremony of Gallifreyan life. Abandoning the elegant corridors and meticulously manicured gardens of the Citadel, he had built himself a home high in the mountains where the land remained untamed. His stone hut was small and featured few comforts apart from his bed, his favorite chair, and his books. 

Undoubtedly, it was a difficult life, far more difficult than he had anticipated. Without a machine to provide him with food and drink, he was forced to carry his water from the clear mountain streams and eat what he could gather from the wild plants or grow in his small garden. Still, despite its many hardships, it was a way of life he savored, and one he had never regretted choosing, although he did long for a bit of company every now and then.

The Gallifreyans in their domed Citadel never had to worry about the changing seasons or inclement weather. Within its borders, nature was held under tight control. But outside, in the wild wastes, the hermit had long since learned to cope with nature's cycles and seasons, and to track the peculiar growth patterns of every edible plant. Every year, in the autumn, the hermit made the trek from his mountain home to the marshlands at the outskirts of the Citadel to gather tubers and spicy greens, which he would dry and use as food throughout the winter. And it was during one of these annual trips that the hermit came upon a truly startling sight.

It was a young man, one of the newly Loomed, wiry and thin with an unruly shock of straight, dark hair. Gallifreyans emerged from their Looms fully grown but, from the looks of him, this one was particularly new, probably not more than fourteen or fifteen years old. 

And he was standing outside the dome.

Curious, and a bit alarmed–in all the centuries he'd been coming to gather tubers, he had never once seen someone step outside the Citadel, and certainly not an unattended child–the old hermit made a swift, but cautious approach. If the young man heard him coming, though, he gave no sign. He just stood there in the russet grass with his hands in the pockets of his simple robes, staring up at the sweeping towers and spires with a critical expression. 

The hermit was on the verge of reaching out to him, to alert him of his presence, when the boy surprised him by speaking first.

"From the outside, it looks so small," he commented, the cadence of his voice marking him at once as an Academy student, a Junior Time Lord. "Yet, just this morning, my entire universe was contained within those walls." He turned to face the hermit then, meeting his gaze head on. "Boggling, isn't it?"

The hermit took a surprised step back, not just because of the intensity of the boy's blue stare, but because of the obvious amusement he saw twinkling behind his eyes. 

"The Citadel is a world in itself," the hermit responded, startling himself with the raspy whisper of his long-disused voice. "But it is not the world."

The young man smiled, a wry, crooked grin that caused his deep blue eyes to take on a mischievous gleam. 

"Yes, I know that now," he said. "I wonder how many of them in there can say the same."

At the time, the old hermit had been shocked by the young man's words and his boldness, so unusual in Gallifreyan youth. But he was intrigued, as well. Particularly when the boy pointed to the basket he carried strapped to his back, his sharp-featured face lighting up with excitement.

"I say, are those cannaedulis tubers?" he asked eagerly. "I've never seen them apart from pictures. Do you live out here?"

The old hermit nodded and nearly smiled, still a little wary. 

"I do," he said, his voice emerging a little stronger this time. 

The boy grinned.

"That's brilliant, that is," he said, glancing around while taking in a deep, bracing breath of marshy air. "I can't tell you how often I've wished I could live out here. No tutors, no block transfer equations, no stodgy House Cardinals to tell you how to act or what to think… Just the fresh air and the silver trees and the big orange sky above your head…" 

He sighed deeply, then faced the hermit again.

"Is your House nearby?" he asked.

The hermit gave a start. 

"What? Oh, no. No, I don't have a House. I live alone, many miles south of here. In the mountains."

The boy's eyes widened. 

"You don't say!" He beamed. "I live there too! Well, I did before I was transmatted off to school. My Family's House is down there–Lungbarrow, it's called. One of the oldest Houses on Gallifrey, as my old Cousins like to say. Not that I give a mangy murinae's tail…" 

He sniffed and hunched his shoulders, burying his hands deep in his pockets once more.

The hermit blinked. He'd heard of Lungbarrow–an ancient, odd sort of place widely rumored to produce eccentrics and, in a few cases, even madmen. Suddenly, the boy's strangely mercurial temperament began to make some sense.

"Do you have a name, son?" he asked curiously.

"Yeah." The boy shot him a sharp look. "But I don't use it."

The hermit frowned in confusion. 

"Why not?"

"'Cause I hate it, that's why. Bad enough having been Loomed on Otherstide without carting that awful name around as well."

The old man raised his eyebrows. 

"What do your friends call you, then?" he asked.

"Don't have any," the boy sniffed, his posture straightening with the defiant pride of the social outcast. "None in my year, anyway. But if you really want to know, everyone at the Academy calls me Theta."

"Theta?" the hermit repeated, slightly aghast.

"Yeah. Theta Sigma. My tutor says it suits me." He gave a wry snort. "Can't really argue, though, can I. Who else but the class nutter would think to come out here anyway, hm? –Oh, no offense!" he added quickly.

But the old man just shook his head. The nickname Theta was an old one, a label of ridicule used in the schoolyard to tease and torment those students who spent their days in a daze, dreaming when they should be working. But to be called Theta Sigma…the hermit could only imagine the cruel taunts and pranks the young man must have endured. He frowned, his hearts going out to the proud young man before him. This lonely boy without a name…

"Theta," he said somewhat hesitantly, struck by a sudden thought. "Do you like books?"

"Do I like books?" The boy gave an incredulous smirk. "Hmm, let me think. I practically live in the Prydonian library so…yeah, I suppose you could say I like books. Why?"

The hermit did smile then, slightly disturbed at the way it stretched the long-disused muscles of his face. He suddenly realized the last time he had smiled, really smiled, had to have been some eight years before. It was an uncomfortable thought, but the boy's enthusiasm quickly drove it from his mind.

"Well, I have something of a library myself," he told him. "They're the books I collected from planets across the universe."

"What, seriously?" The boy stared in amazement. "You've been off Gallifrey?"

The old man smiled again.

"Oh yes," he said. "I was a Time Lord once. A very long time ago."

The boy looked him up and down in awed disbelief.

"Rassilon," he breathed. "But, wait, if you were a Time Lord, how did you end up out here, hm? If you don't mind my asking."

The hermit shrugged, causing the large basket on his back to bob and rustle. 

"It wasn't an impulsive decision," he said. "I'd been thinking about leaving for many years before I actually found the courage to do it. But now I have…" 

He glanced up at the towering spirals behind the dome, then over at the boy. 

"It was very hard," he admitted somberly. "I gave up a lot to come out here…far more than I'd anticipated. Far more than any man should have to give. But such is the price of freedom on Gallifrey…"

The boy regarded him thoughtfully, his blue eyes darkly intense. 

The hermit smiled again.

"Now," he said, "enough about that. I actually have a small camp set up, not far from here. If you'd care to follow me, I could show you a few of my books. If you're interested, that is..."

"Hm? Oh, right, yes. Yes!" The young man nodded as if snapped out of a dream and at once began striding after the old hermit on his long, skinny legs. 

"You know," he said after a moment. "You asked me my name, but you never told me yours."

"You're right," the hermit nodded. "That's because, like you, I no longer use it. Not since I gave up my position on the Council."

Theta stared. 

"You were on the High Council?"

The hermit just smiled. 

"That was another lifetime," he said. "Most people nowadays simply refer to me as The Hermit…if they deign to say anything at all."

"The Hermit, hm?" Theta repeated. "Sounds good to me. Know what, Hermit?"

"What?"

The boy grinned his crooked grin. 

"I'm quite glad I met you. I haven't had this much fun since I left home!"

The hermit had to close his eyes for a moment, struggling not to show how much the boy's unexpected words had touched him. When he could trust himself to speak, he said, "Theta?"

"Yeah, Hermit?"

"I'm glad I met you too. Ah, here we are," he smiled, gesturing to a low, rough structure made of sticks and mud. A neat ring of stones sat a short distance from the entrance, the whitish pile of ash and dark charcoal at its center indicating its purpose. 

The boy frowned.

"Wait, hang on," he said. "Are you telling me you keep your books in there?"

"No, no, not at all," the hermit assured him. "Only the few I could not bear to leave behind, and those I keep safe in a weatherproof satchel. Here, I'll show you," he said, shrugging off his basket and crawling into his tiny hut. He emerged only a few seconds later, a waxy, yellowish sack held protectively to his chest. "Here we are."

He smiled, more excited than he'd care to admit that he finally had someone to share his treasures with. 

"In this bag, I have five books–two from Gallifrey and three from a complicated little world called Earth."

"Earth?" Theta frowned. "Isn't that the planet with the dolphins? I think–don't we have a treaty with them or something? Or was that the mice?"

"Yes. And, yes we do," the hermit said. "Several, in fact. But dolphins did not write these books."

"Who did, then?" the boy asked, clearly confused. 

The hermit almost laughed.

"Mice and dolphins aren't the only intelligent life forms on Earth, you know," he said. "Like I said, it's a very complicated place. Quite chaotic, really, as though a host of different worlds and creatures were long ago lumped together in a massive, multicolored ball of clay and left to fend for themselves. Dolphins, mice, humans, shrimp, kangaroos, raccoons, canaries, frogs, cats, dogs, donkeys, sharks, gnats, grasshoppers, redwood trees, daffodils… Do you realize that Earth has over four hundred times more types of native life forms than Gallifrey, and up to twelve-thousand times more than most other worlds in this galaxy? And that is not counting all the species that have died out over the years."

Theta cocked an eyebrow. 

"Sounds intriguing," he said, and grinned.

"Oh, it is," the hermit nodded. "I was sent there once, back when I was still a Time Lord, first to a place called Tibet, then to a small island called Britain. And it was in Britain that I picked up this book."

Reaching into his sack, he pulled out a slender paperback about the width of his palm. 

"It's called The Time Machine, and it was written by a human male named H.G. Wells. He was known to his contemporaries as a scientific visionary and social profit."

"Oh? Why's that?"

"Well…largely because of this book," the hermit said, holding it out for the boy to take. "It involves a Time Traveler. A man whose name is never revealed."

"Like you, you mean." Theta glanced up from the book's back cover with a cheeky grin. 

The hermit looked startled, then returned his grin in kind.

"No…well, perhaps… But, I was actually thinking more of you."

Now it was the boy's turn to look surprised. 

"Me?"

"Yes. You plan on becoming a full Time Lord one day, don't you?"

The boy's expression was suddenly very serious. 

"It's the only thing in my life of which I am fully certain," he said. "I want to get off this dull rock more than anything. It's all I can ever think about, being the commander of my own time capsule, all the places to see, the exotic customs and peoples to encounter..."

The hermit nodded, his eyes soft with understanding. 

"I suspected as much. Yes…yes, I definitely think this book will be a good read for you."

The boy furrowed his brow, clearly curious, but the hermit refused to elaborate.

"Read it," he said, sliding his satchel back into his hut and bending down to heft his tuber basket onto his back. "Think about it tonight, before you go to sleep. I'll be here tomorrow, and the day after…if you want to talk."

The boy looked more confused than ever. 

"What are you saying? Do you want me to take this book?"

"That's right. Take it back to the Academy with you."

"You're trusting me with this book?" Theta frowned. "This book you carried with you all the way from the mountains? Probably the only copy on the entire planet, and you're telling me to take it?"

"Read it tonight," the hermit repeated, already walking back the way they'd come. "I know you'll return it when you're done."

Theta stared after the old man, his eyes stinging with unexpected moisture. No one had ever made such a gesture to him before, or shown him such respect. He was used to being the odd one out, the cloudy-headed screw-up, the one always chosen last on team projects. He'd all but said as much when he told the hermit his school nickname. And yet, the old man had trusted him with one of his most treasured possessions. A retired Time Lord, a former member of the High Council, and he had treated him, Theta Sigma, as though he were an equal.

"I'll come back!" Theta shouted after the departing hermit, clutching the slender book securely against his chest. "You don't have to worry! Tomorrow evening, after lectures. I'll be back!"

The hermit continued walking as if he hadn't heard, but he watched out of the corner of his eye as the boy ran back toward the dome across the russet grass. Slowly, he smiled, then shook his head.

From the moment they'd first met, the former Time Lord had sensed something familiar about that boy. He'd felt it deeply, a strange, peculiar sort of resonance in the fabric of spacetime that flared up whenever the boy flashed that crooked grin of his. It was only now, though, after the boy had left, that his rusty temporal senses were finally coming into focus. With their help, he slowly realized why he recognized the boy–and recalled the circumstances under which he had met him before.

It had been on Earth, back when he had still been a Time Lord–in Britain to be precise. The man he'd met then had been tall and elegant, imposing and dedicated–a Time Lord on his third persona, on the cusp of regenerating into his fourth. A renegade time traveler who never revealed his true name. Instead, he went by the title he'd earned at the Academy, not the highest degree offered by the institution but one that resonated with authority throughout the cosmos. 

The Doctor.

And now that he knew, he could see it plainly. The boy had a different face, a different voice, even different mannerisms from the man he'd known. Yet despite all that, he was still the Doctor. That same Doctor who would one day meet H.G. Wells and inspire him to write his famous novel, The Time Machine.

Sometimes, the intricacies of time travel were boggling even to the mind of a Time Lord.

EDITOR'S NOTE:  
The following is a brief note Smith scrawled in the margin of his journal. It features the first instance Smith referred to the school's matron, Nurse Joan Redfern, although he would not refer to her by name in his journal for another month and a half.

 

Oh, horrible. Rough ending, rough overall, far too long, desperately requires revision. But I'll have to deal with that later, I've lost track of the time again and already I am forced to rush–I have that 8 p.m. whist game with Matron tonight, and then there are those essays on Robespierre to correct. I probably should have declined the game, but I must admit, I shall be glad of Matron's company. I've been feeling rather put-upon and friendless of late; being the new man on campus the other teachers have been somewhat aloof, even cold. At least, I will assume it is because I am the new man. Worse still, I told the headmaster when I agreed to accept this position that I do not touch guns, yet this morning he assigned me to oversee the boys' target practice for the remainder of the month. Matron seems to understand my frustrations; as she is the only woman at this school–well, apart from the female cooks and cleaning staff and my own maid Martha–I can only assume how isolated she too must feel at times. Yes, perhaps I'll add more to this story tomorrow. This writing is a good outlet, I've found, and quite useful in dispelling those disturbing dreams as well. Why, despite its roughness, this tale practically wrote itself, almost as though I had heard the dialogue before… Strange, actually...

But now, to get ready. Can I even remember how to play whist? I feel I haven't played in centuries…

John Smith  
Journal of Impossible Things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Editor's Note:  
> Nineteenth century author Herbert George Wells stowed away aboard the Sixth Doctor's TARDIS in the Season 22 episode "Timelash." His book, The Time Machine, was first published in 1895. Wells coined the term "time machine," much in the same way Isaac Asimov later coined the term "robotics."


	5. Faces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Editor's Note:  
> The page preceding this entry was entirely filled with roughly sketched portraits of nine different men. The features were blurred and the paper was slightly damaged, showing signs of repeated attempts to erase and re-draw certain aspects of each face. Yet, although the faces were smudged, each portrait had one constant. The eyes were all the same, and they stared out from the page with an uncanny directness. Looking at them, it seems almost as though they are watching, viewing their viewer with identical knowing stares. A most unnerving sight, and certainly enough to justify Smith's recurring nightmares…

Faces

Faces, faces, faces. Ten are one and one is ten. Ten mirror images, and all of them mine. How can they be mine? These faces are all so different, old men, young men, madmen, men of middle years. Men in hats, with umbrellas, wearing frilled shirts or golfing sweaters, long coats and even longer scarves, often in the most garish of rainbow colors. They crop up in my nightmares, disturbing my sleep.

In dreams, I stand before my morning mirror, razor in hand, ready to prepare for the day. I look up, but the man in the glass is not Me. And it is terrible. To find oneself displaced from one's own body, inhabiting the unfamiliar form of a stranger! It is a violation of the most primal and embarrassing sort.

He has such ancient eyes this man, all of him, each of him. They burn with such strength, such dangerous knowledge. His faces frighten me, but how can I escape them? They are in me, part of me, always with me. Whispering, advising, criticizing, scoffing. And I wonder, what must I seem to them? This frightened mortal, trapped, lost behind those eternal eyes…

The mirror shatters and there are ten splintered fragments on the floor, those faces staring up at me, accusing, pitying, such intense sadness... Wrapped in a sheet, I fall to my knees. Lightening flashes and I cry out into the Oncoming Storm with a voice as unfamiliar as my face, my hands.

Who am I?

Who am I?

Who am I?

And then I wake and the storm is passed. The face in the mirror is reassuringly my own–

Until I dream again.

John Smith  
Journal of Impossible Things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Editor's Note:   
> This chapter references Doctor Who: The Movie featuring Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor.


	6. The Rose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Editor's Note:  
> This passage was difficult to decipher. The words were mostly obscured by a sketch of the face of a young woman. Her features were blurred, the ink badly smudged, and her short hair was wild and windswept. Yet, the sadness in her expression was unmistakable. It was a look, perhaps, of a final, reluctant farewell.

The Rose

Through the hardened snows and frosts of winter, a seed quietly takes root. Only barely noticed, it sprouts and grows. With subtle, invisible movements, its tendrils entwine themselves around the fences and barriers that mark the frozen landscape, denied and overlooked until… 

There comes a day—this magical day. The frosted land has thawed. It awakens to find the lonely expanse now blooms with color. 

And the color is hers, all hers.

 

EDITOR'S NOTE:  
Four pages later, Smith made a second reference to his mysterious flower. He wrote the lines across the length of the page, parallel with the journal's center crease. Its setting seems incongruous, however, given that the rest of the page was filled with smudged ink sketches of ruined fields and barbed wire: a desolate scene of war, with scattered groups of young men trekking through the mud with rifles strapped to their backs. A disturbingly prescient question follows these soldiers as they march: "And What Of The Year To Come?"

 

The Daisy and the Rose

I used to dream of daisies.

I was shown, once, that a daisy contains the secret of life. I was very young, I don't recall how young, and I had run away from home.

It was a black day, the blackest of my life. I seem to remember...or perhaps this was a part of the dream as well. It was so long ago now, I can no longer discern. But, real or imagined, I had seen something...something terrible, powerful... Something so beautiful, it shook me to my core, and all I could do was run, run, run away. It was a shameful thing, to run, and I felt I could not go home, couldn't show my face for fear I would no longer be welcome. It was a childish fear, but a potent one just the same.

An old man found me, sitting alone on a desolate hill. The hill was bleak and cold, littered with bare rocks and a few pathetic patches of grass and weeds. Yet he sat there on the ground beside me and listened while I poured out all my fears and troubles. He didn't smile, but nor did he scold. He just pointed with one long bony finger. He pointed to a weed, a small, white wildflower. I didn't know what he meant, at first. But I looked at it, studied it, and finally tried to imagine it through his eyes. And it was beautiful. This lonely weed, this windblown, wild daisy, glowed like a jewel in the sun. And when I looked up, the day had brightened. All the colors of the grass, the sky, the trees...they were richer, deeper than any painting. From that time on, whenever I dreamed of beauty, of joy, there were always daises. White and pure and gleaming in the sun.

But now...

Something has changed. Now, when I sleep, my best dreams bloom with roses. And one in particular always manages to draw my eye.

This rose is pink, and it stands alone, peeping out from the space between the slats of a garden fence. I can never touch this flower, it is far beyond my reach. But the merest glimpse of this, my rose, is enough to warm my heart.

It is not that this flower is more perfectly formed than the others. Nor is it the brightest. But it calls to me just the same.

The Rose's delicate beauty is deceptive. Beneath her soft petals, there are thorns. She is a fighter, a protector, a survivor. And, although her time is fleeting and she is doomed to fade, the English Rose remains a hardy and stubborn flower.

I used to dream of daisies. But now the Rose is all I see.

John Smith  
Journal of Impossible Things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Editor's Note:   
> This chapter was inspired by "The Time Monster," featuring the Third Doctor and "The Sound of Drums/The Last of the Time Lords" featuring the Tenth Doctor.


	7. Doubts and Decisions: A Prelude

Doubts  
Now, here is an Impossible Thing. Or, if not Impossible, it is certainly Incredible for I still am having a hard time believing it. The magazine that published my first story about the old Gallifreyan man and his strange police box has requested I compose a longer, serialized story along the same lines. If I agree, they have offered me quite a surprising sum for what I had believed to be merely a small, local, boys' magazine. It is a sum I can not lightly turn down. I discussed the matter with Nurse Redfern over luncheon today, and she is highly motivated, brimming with confidence in me while I remain unsure. I have never consciously planned and written a story. Always, they seem to have come to me in dreams, my Old Man and the Police Box tale included. I only sent it out on a whim; I'm still not certain why I did. And now they want more. I suppose I should be flattered, but the truth of the matter is, I feel frightened somehow. No, it's more than fear… I feel oddly exposed, as though the works in my journal are a private, personal part of me, thoughts and memories so strange and deep that...

They're nothing of the sort, of course. I am a teacher of History, I certainly know fact from fiction. My scribbles and dreams are merely the imaginings of an overtired mind. Nothing so terrible could be real, and nothing so marvelous could ever involve an ordinary working chap like me. The routine of life, the repetition of the mundane–it must be why I escape so often into myself. And, perhaps that is why I feel so nervous now. These magazine editors wish me to share my most personal fancies and dreams with a world of faceless readers. Under such circumstances, what fantasist would not feel exposed?

 

EDITOR'S NOTE:  
Beneath and around this entry, Smith drew a cluster of faceless figures trapped behind what seems to be a fence. Along the margin, he scrawled his thoughts: "Victims of The Wire–possible title? Faceless people, grasping hands…Nightmare imagery, perhaps too frightening for younger boys... The Cat Nuns of–No, far too fanciful. A beautiful woman made of wood–a talking tree? They'll think you mad, John. Think. Imagination tempered with practicality…"

The next two pages are filled with scribbled out titles and quick pen sketches of very imaginative alien-looking creatures, including a particularly strange object like a pepper pot with ears. Next to this image, in nearly illegible letters, Smith wrote "all tentacles and hate."

 

Decisions  
Over the past week, Joan–that is, Nurse Redfern and I–have been discussing my stories, and I believe we have reached a solution to my writer's dilemma. Boys like to read of the adventures of other boys, and my story of the Hermit and the young boy is begging for expansion. At least, that is how Joan put it. She possesses such keen insight into the minds of the boys at this school, probably because, as a Nurse, she has seen (and treated the results of) every trick and prank a young boy could think to pull. And so, that is what I shall do. I'll develop the characters of that boy and his friend the Hermit, find out who they are. Sitting here now, I think of the old Hermit and the pictures begin to flow through my mind. And words, strange, unusual words... 

Shada. 

Salyavin. 

What are they? A place? A person? 

This infernal writer's block is still with me, still clouding my thoughts. I believe I will sleep on it. In the morning, if the words are clearer, then I shall write.

John Smith  
Journal of Impossible Things


	8. The Legend of Salyavin Pt II

The Legend of Salyavin Part II  
From the writings of Dr. John Smith  
Edited by Rowena Zahnrei

The Doctor hummed to himself as he strode through the corridors of his amazing time ship. At seven hundred sixty-two years old, he was a Time Lord at the top of his game: free, independent and fully enjoying it. For the first time in his long, long life, there was no Council looking over his shoulder, no schoolmaster or high-level bureaucrat judging him or chasing him or making note of his nonconformist tendencies. The universe was finally his to explore, without hiding and without strings. 

Well…there were some strings, but not near enough to matter. 

Much.

Still humming, the tall Time Lord opened the door to his ship's control room, his long scarf swaying at his heels. His assistant, a young Time Lady with the unfortunate name Romanadvoratrelundar, looked up at his approach, as did K-9, a small mechanical dog with a large electronic brain.

"Hello, Romana. Hello, K-9," the Doctor said as he breezed into the room, his eyes on the control console and his mind on their next destination.

"Master," the little dog acknowledged. 

Romana gave the Doctor a slightly amused look as she stepped aside to give him more room at the controls.

"Good morning, Doctor," she said, and tucked a lock of her straight blonde hair behind her ear. "You're in a good mood."

"Am I?" he said, sounding as if this had only just occurred to him. "Yes, well, I suppose you could say I am in a good mood. At least, I don't think I'm in a bad mood."

Romana rolled her eyes. 

"What's the occasion?"

The Doctor glanced at her. 

"I just received a communication from a very old, very dear friend of mine. I haven't been to see him for…oh…it must be more than four hundred years now. And so, today, I've decided to remedy that. We're going to pay him a visit."

"Oh yes? And where does this old, dear friend of yours live? No, don't tell me, let me guess. He's from Earth, am I right?"

"Wrong. He lives on Gallifrey."

Romana raised her eyebrows. 

"Gallifrey? I didn't think you had any friends on Gallifrey. At least, none worth risking your arrest to visit."

"Arrest?" The Doctor frowned down at her. "You think the Council would dare arrest me? After all I've done for them?"

Romana smirked.

"In a Sontaran second," she said. "You're still the President of the High Council, you know. Running off and leaving the actual work to interim leaders doesn't change that. If they catch you on Gallifrey, they'll force you to resume your duties."

The Doctor grimaced. 

"A fate worse than prison... But, that scenario only applies if they detect the TARDIS materializing on the planet. Which they won't. Because we won't."

"Won't what?"

"Materialize, of course. Vanish from here and appear down there."

Romana wrinkled her forehead. 

"Then how-?"

"I plan to take us down manually."

Romana looked shocked. 

"Doctor, surely you don't mean-!"

"That's right." The Doctor gave his assistant a wicked smile. "I'm going to fly in and land the TARDIS right outside my friend's home. If Gallifreyan defenses detect us at all, they'll probably pass us off as a meteorite. After all, who in their right mind would bother taking the time to fly through the air when they can," he flicked open his hand like a flower, "'pop' from place to place in an instant, eh?"

"Well, obviously someone who is not in his right mind." Romana shook her head. "So tell me, Doctor. Who is this person you're willing to risk your freedom to see?"

"I told you," he said, preoccupied with manipulating the ship's controls. "He's an old friend of mine."

"Does this old friend have a name?"

"I'm sure he does," the Doctor said, pressing three buttons and a switch.

"Well?" she prompted.

"Well what? You asked if he had a name, I answered. Everyone has a name. I don't see that it matters, anyway. Whatever his name is, I'm certain you've never heard of him."

Romana frowned.

"Now, hold it right there," she said. "Are you telling me you don't know what his name is? How can you be friends with this man and not even know his name?"

The Doctor looked straight at her. 

"Are you my friend?"

Romana blinked, caught off guard by the question. 

"Well…yes. I'd like to think of myself as your friend."

"And what's my name?"

"Your, um… Well, I…I…"

"There you are, then." 

The Doctor turned his attention back to his work. 

"His name isn't important. What is important is the impact he's had on my life. I've known this man since I was very, very, very young. And I'm certain that, were it not for his influence, I would not be the man I am today."

"You'd be normal, you mean?" Romana said wryly.

"I don't know what I'd be," the Doctor told her honestly. "But I wouldn't be a Time Lord."

"What do you mean?" she asked. 

The Doctor gave a little sigh, realizing she wasn't about to give up.

"All right," he said. "If it wasn't for this man's encouragement to stay in school and complete my degrees, I wouldn't have made it through the Academy. Not because I couldn't do the work," he was quick to add. "But because I didn't fit in there. All those rules to follow, all those pointless assignments done only for grades… But I stuck with it, because of him. That's why I owe it to him to be there at a time like this." 

He lowered his eyes slightly. 

"No one should have to face regeneration alone. Certainly not a man about to enter his thirteenth and final life."

Romana brought a slender hand to her mouth. 

"Oh, Doctor. Why didn't you say anything? Of course you must go to him. What can I do to help?"

"Nothing much, really," he said. "I think I can handle a manual landing. Oh–but there is one thing you could do. I'd really appreciate it."

"Name it," she said.

"I left my bag of jelly babies in the conservatory. Could you possibly go and fetch it for me?"

"Candy." Romana frowned. "You want me to go all the way to the conservatory for a bag of candy?"

"And take K-9 with you," the Doctor added, busying himself with the many buttons and knobs on the console. "He could use the exercise."

Romana glanced down at the mechanical dog, then back at the Doctor. 

"Exercise. Of course," she said dryly. "Come on, K-9. We wouldn't want the Doctor to faint from hypoglycemia, now would we?"

The little dog raised its head. 

"Hypoglycemia," he repeated in his mechanical voice. "A deficiency of glucose, or sugar, in the blood resulting in an inadequate supply of fuel for the brain."

Romana gave a slight snort at that. 

"I couldn't have put it better myself." 

Casting one last look at the Doctor, the young Time Lady stalked out of the room, her white boots clicking as she strode down the hallway. 

"K-9!" she called.

"Coming, Mistress," the machine replied, and rolled its way after her.

Once they had gone, the Doctor stopped what he was doing at the console and sighed, running a hand through his mop of tangled, brown curls. 

It had been four hundred years. Four hundred years since he had last seen his old mentor and friend. He was a different person now, no longer a frustrated failure but a Time Lord on his fourth persona, finally living his childhood dreams. 

Why, then, did the prospect of seeing the old Hermit again make him feel so…awkward?

Taking three steps to the left, the Doctor punched a few buttons, then turned to face a small, rectangular screen recessed into the wall. As he watched, a colorful image slowly came into focus: two men standing in the reddish light of a Gallifreyan sunset, one tall with lank, whitish hair and a scraggly beard long enough to cover his chest, the other shorter, thinner, paler, with black hair, piercing blue eyes, and a wry, crooked smile. The Hermit and the Doctor. The Doctor before he was the Doctor. Before he was a Time Lord. When he was still known, to his Family and to his peers, by the cruel schoolyard nickname Theta Sigma.

Closing his eyes, the Doctor turned away and flicked the image off, lapsing into memory as he recalled the circumstances behind that image. It had begun with his Cousin Quences's tenth regeneration, but had ended with Theta making what the Doctor now recognized as being the single most crucial decision of his young life…

*******

Theta Sigma was home, but not because he wanted to be. After spending more than three quarters of his young life living at the Academy, the long, dark corridors and cavernous rooms of Lungbarrow, his Family's ancient ancestral House, barely felt familiar to him. There was a coldness here, a distance. And it wasn't just because the Kithriarch, the legal and ceremonial head of the House, was ailing and soon to regenerate.

Quencessetianobayolocaturgraphadeyyilungbarrowmas, or Quences, as the Family called him for short, was the four hundred twenty-second Kithriarch of Lungbarrow, and the fourth-eldest of Theta's forty-four Cousins. And the only reason he had called Theta home was that Gallifreyan tradition dictated that every member of the household had to be in attendance at their ancestral House at the time of a Family member's regeneration.

Theta hated living at the Academy, but he hated life at Lungbarrow more. It was a forbidding, stifling place, dark and isolated high among the southern slopes of Mount Lung. And, as if the isolation weren't bad enough, the House itself was a sentient being, a living structure with a mind and feelings of its own. Within its walls, Theta could hear it whispering in his mind, echoing Quences's disapproval. 

It was the Kithriarch's belief that, with his startlingly high intelligence, Theta should be at the top of his class, not languishing among the lower fifteen. What the old man didn't understand was that grades didn't matter to Theta. He cared nothing for his academic or social standing at the Academy. All he wanted was to be left alone with his inventions and his thoughts, free to follow his own interests his own way. 

The problem was, at thirty-six years old, Theta was still very much a child and, on Gallifrey, the thoughts and interests of children did not count.

Quences, of course, agreed with Theta's tutors that his inventions and experiments were nothing more than a frivolous waste of time. As Kithriarch, his Family's standing was all he cared about, and Theta's poor performance at the Academy was damaging to the reputation of the Family and its House. The fact that the boy insisted on carrying a degrading nickname rather than accept the ancient Family name Quences had given him was like a double blow. From the moment Theta crossed the threshold to Quences's room, the tension between the two of them had been palpable. Theta had tried to be polite, in deference to the old man's failing health. But, from the start, it was clear to everyone that a fight would be inevitable.

Even in his weakened state, Quences's stubbornness was an even match for Theta's own. The shouting match, when it came, had been fierce, almost violent, and the results had been twofold. Firstly, the outburst of emotion had stressed Quences's hearts, ultimately hastening his regeneration from a matter of days to a matter of hours. Secondly, the fight had prompted Theta to flee from the House. This meant that he wasn't present when the regeneration took place; a scandalous break with tradition that nearly broke Quences once he was well enough to be told. From that day on, the relationship between Theta and the Kithriarch was irrevocably damaged, poisoned by a bitterness that would never completely fade. This bitterness would have terrible consequences for the Family in the years to come. 

At the time, however, Theta was only aware of the searing pain he felt after having been told, in essence, that he was not a welcome party at his own House.

When Theta began running, he didn't have a specific destination in mind. He just wanted to get away as far and as fast as he could; away from the House, away from the gathered Cousins and, especially, away from Quences. After a while, though, when the ache in his legs had finally begun to dull the ache in his hearts, his thoughts began to turn to his old friend the Hermit, who made his home in the southern mountains.

It was well past midnight when Theta finally stumbled upon the Hermit's door. He'd been hesitant to knock, not wanting to wake the old man, but, somehow, he'd known Theta was there. Taking in the boy's flushed face and disheveled appearance, he'd opened his arms to him without a word. Two hours and six cups of strong herbal tea later, Theta had managed to choke out his tale and, finally, cried himself to sleep. When he awoke late the next morning, the Hermit greeted him with a humble breakfast, then led him out into the daylight where he sat him down on the rocks and began to talk.

"Let me tell you a story," he said. "It's the story of a young man, not all that different from you. His name was Salyavin, and he was the most terrible criminal Gallifrey has ever known."

Theta frowned in surprise. 

"What are you saying?" he asked. "That I'm destined to turn to crime?"

"No, no, I'm not saying anything of the sort," the Hermit assured him. "This is just a story. A true story, but a story nonetheless. We can discuss its meaning once it's over. For now, all you need do is listen."

Theta sighed. 

"All right. I'm sorry. Please, go on."

And, with a slight nod, the Hermit did.

To Be Continued…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDITOR'S NOTE:  
> The references in this chapter to the Doctor's Family and his House are taken from the novel Lungbarrow by Marc Platt.


	9. The Daleks and the Wolf

The Daleks and the Wolf

I have had the most horrific dream, images so dark even the light of day cannot erase them all. My maid Martha tells me it is normal to have such dreams when one has been ill, as I have been these past three days. But despite her reassurances, I cannot remember a time when I felt so weak and nauseous, or when I have had a dream that could provoke in me this strong a reaction. Beside this nightmare, all my other dreams pale. Even now, a sense of unease hangs over me, as though I can sense a monster lurking round every corner.

I am too ill to add much to my little magazine serial, but I feel I cannot rest soundly until I have recorded this dream on paper—to expel the demons, as it were. It really is beyond imagining. Hideous, unearthly creatures shielded in metal casings, hundreds of them, millions, basically cylindrical in shape. They rolled through my nightmare in an inexorable wave, streams of deadly electricity shooting from narrow tubes fitted to their sides. They have such a terrible cry, these creatures, these Daleks…voices like I've never heard vibrating through my skull… "EX-TERM-I-NATE! EX-TERM-I-NATE! EX-TERM-I-NATE!"

Countless civilizations fall before these monsters, ancient, beautiful worlds, unique cultures, decimated not for reasons of politics or ideology, but for a difference in appearance. These peoples were not Daleks, they were therefore vermin, inhabiting space and blocking access to metals and minerals the Daleks required for their further expansion. These venomous creatures destroyed so much… In my dream I saw the devastation…the Shining World of the Seven Systems, its silver trees and brick-red sky choked with smoke, all of it burning, burning, ivory towers crumbling, elegant spires scorched and broken… And I am there, physically there, myself and yet a stranger. The Doctor… In my unconscious state, I have become my creation.

Such anger leaps within me at the sound of the Daleks' approach, such despair squeezes my heart, and I am burning, burning as Gallifrey burned, burning so my eyes cannot contain the hateful flames… This firestorm of hate and rage scorches my soul, leaving me empty and raw. And yet, I do not wake from this nightmare. It continues, neverending, pulling me ever deeper…

The price of fighting is high, so high, yet the Daleks keep coming, keep killing, keep adapting…until I alone am left standing against them. Only me, faced against millions upon millions of Daleks…

Crammed together in armored tanks like inverted saucers, a Dalek army hovers against a backdrop of stars: a swarm of gleaming metallic wasps, ready to attack. Lost in this nightmare, I, the Doctor, stand in the center of a silent room. The air is thick with the acrid smells of electricity and death. I feel…such an emptiness within me. I have lost something, someone, very important to me. I sent them away, my dearest friends, TARDIS and my Rose. Away from the pall of death and hate. But in doing this I left myself isolated. I am the bait in a trap of my own design. And it's working, they're coming, the Daleks are coming for me because only I stand between them and the Earth, between them and their need to ravage the planet and slaughter its population, pulping the flesh of humanity to extract what they need to grow still more of their foul, metal-encased race. My hands are moving, working so fast and so sure, yet inside I am trembling, my face cold and slick with sweat. And then there is a click, a deep mechanical thrum, and my Dalek trap is set. My weapon is a wave of energy as powerful as the sun. This wave could obliterate the Daleks, turn them to dust and blow them away, yet it cannot be contained. To destroy the Daleks would be to destroy the Earth, to destroy humanity.

Such a terrible responsibility, and I feel the panic rising. How can I make such a choice? This is a choice for the gods, yet within this nightmare reality I feel less a Time Lord and more John Smith: just a man, small and frightened and shaking. Gathering my strength, I grip my weapon's trigger with all the determination I can muster, but—as happens in nightmares—I find I cannot move; my muscles are frozen. My strength begins to leave me, my determination flows down my cheeks as helpless tears. The Daleks have already arrived. They surround me, their piercing metallic cries filling the air, their myriad saucers hanging in the sky. I can feel them all around me, closing in, but I can't do it, I can't—

A sound from behind, whirring, wheezing, stirring up the dust and the smoke. A light flashes and I turn to see the TARDIS, my beautiful, impossible TARDIS, all blue paint and right angles. She fades into being before my eyes, her doors slamming open to reveal a blinding, coiling, living light, more gold than gold, shimmering with fearsome power. From within this light, a vision emerges. A goddess burning with the strength of a hundred stars, her eyes glowing brightly from within. She is the Bad Wolf, a fortress of power and awe, poised against the Dalek threat. Yet beneath her blinding glory, her lovely face is streaked with tears. Tears of pain, of anguish and fear… Fear not of the Daleks, but for me. And slowly, I begin to understand. My Rose and my TARDIS have merged to form this being, their wills entwined by the power of love. I sent them away, but they returned as my savior, to defend my life at the risk of their own.

"My Doctor," they call me, she calls me, and her voice is filled with all the love that drives her, with the trust that sustains her spirit and her will to fight. Yet, for once, the name feels wrong. She is the one who healed me, and now, with a wave of her arm, puts an end to my struggle against the Daleks. She speaks and they fade to dust, all the Daleks, gone for good. My goddess has freed me from the pain of choice, but already she is fading. The power is killing her, and it's my fault, my fault for being so weak, for placing this fragile child in so much danger. The dream is once again a nightmare as the wonder fades and I realize what I must do. To save the life of my savior, I must embrace Death.

Rose is so warm in my arms. I can taste the salt of her tears on her lips as I draw the deadly power from her small body as though it were the venom of a snake, accepting it into my own. I catch her as she swoons and lay her down on the metal floor, feeling the power of the goddess swirling and writhing within me, flowing like magma through my veins. With a sigh, I release the power back into the heart of the TARDIS in a long, golden stream. But the damage has already been done. My skin prickles and burns, and I can feel my body failing. With the last of my strength, I carry the sleeping Rose into the TARDIS and close the doors, and for a moment I am filled with fear. The burning beneath my skin intensifies, a million fire ants crawling up my bones, gnawing at my muscles. The pain is unbearable, and it only gets worse, growing and growing until—

I woke up screaming, my sheets and blankets strewn across the floor. Martha was there, shouting for me to wake up, and my dear friend Joan was not far behind. It was humiliating to have her see me in such an agitated state, but Joan is a remarkably understanding woman. She has a gentleness about her, a tenderness…well, only natural that she would, being a nurse. But still…

Perhaps when I'm well, I could invite Joan to join me for a morning walk before classes. We could walk into town, breakfast at the inn…if she is agreeable, of course...

This dream has left me badly shaken, and I know the effects will linger. What I need is the reassurance of another human's company, of the sights and smells and tastes of the world around me. Yes, a morning out with Joan would be just the thing to chase away any nightmare monsters that may still be lingering in my mind. I think I will bring it up to her. When I am well.

John Smith  
Journal of Impossible Things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDITOR'S NOTE:   
> This chapter was inspired by the Ninth Doctor episodes "Bad Wolf" and "The Parting of the Ways."


	10. The Most Impossible Thing

The Most Impossible Thing

Joan Redfern. My sweetheart.

I have a sweetheart. Even now, after the words have been set down, even as I watch the ink absorb into the paper, this does not seem real. That Joan—that I, in fact— No, but it must be real. Peculiar and frightening as my imagination may sometimes be, I never could have imagined a moment like that. Our fingers touched, and that simple contact was more heady, more intoxicating than the most ardent of ardent spirits.

It was the first time—I have escorted her home so many times over these past months. We talked, played whist, chess. But I never thought, never even considered she could think of me as—

As her sweetheart.

Before tonight, I had never so much as held her hand. But this evening, when our fingers touched, I looked into her eyes and she looked into mine. And what I saw there was…was wonderful and terrifying. I touched her cheek, her soft hair, praying she would not feel the trembling of my hands. She asked to sit beside me and I held her close in my arms. And then, she kissed my cheek. She rested her head on my shoulder and I had never felt so much.

I cannot find it in me to continue my tale of the Doctor's adventures tonight. Out of all the strange fantasies I have written in these pages, out of all the terrible monsters I have drawn, this is the most impossible thing. This incredible feeling. When we kissed…

This is beyond my experience. There are no words to describe the emotions in my heart. It is as though all my half-realized hopes, my vague dreams for the future, they have suddenly come into focus. And what my mind can now see… It is a true marvel, far more amazing than imaginary time machines and valiant alien Doctors. Those are mere fiction. Empty dreams. But as History teaches us, reality holds more marvels than any work of fiction.

I feel…so much. I feel I was not alive before this day. Rather, I was living some form of half-life, simply going through the motions day by day. But now…now… Now, I am awake. Colors are brighter, scents more intense. I feel, for the first time since accepting this post, I know who I am. And I am happy. Really happy.

My heart is too full, my mind races faster than my hand can write. I cannot sleep. I feel invigorated. I want to walk, to laugh out loud, to dance with the moon!

I have a sweetheart. And her name is Joan. My Joan.

Smith and Joan. A perfect double act.

 

EDITOR'S NOTE:   
Filling the next page was a charcoal pencil portrait of a woman in profile, her fair hair coiled behind her head in a loose bun. On the opposite side was written:

 

My nightmares did not trouble me tonight. Tonight, I dreamed of Joan. I dreamed I took her dancing. We were alone in the park, by the pond. The water was dark and reflected the stars. She held my world in her smile. And, with a kiss, I embraced hers…

John Smith  
Journal of Impossible Things


	11. Deadline

Deadline

I cannot think what is the matter with me, but this accursed story refuses to be written. The characters are there, I know who they are. If I close my eyes, I can see them. There's the old Hermit, his tangled white beard flowing over his patched robes. And young Theta, his blue eyes sharp as he listens to the old man's stories, his lean expression so inquisitive, so focused. The tale the Hermit spins for the boy is a long-forgotten history of an escaped criminal with a terrible power.

Salyavin.

But who is this Salyavin? A monster, certainly. A Time Lord with the power to project his mind into the minds of others, overpowering their will, their very identity. But when I try to picture him, I see only a small, wispy-haired chap…a harmless academic, mostly retired. Professor Chronotis, pouring tea in his Cambridge rooms for the Doctor while the Lady Romana hunts…hunts for a key, the key to the lost prison world of Shada. But the key is not a key. It is a book, an old, dusty volume with an awkward title: The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey. And there is a conflict. Someone…something dangerous is after this book. But…but who, why…?

This deadline is impossible. I can never piece this story together in time. When I began The Old Man and the Police Box, the world of that story was already fully formed in my head, every detail, every nuance. I saw the spires of Gallifrey as clearly as I now see the gnarled oak outside my window.

But those dreams have faded. And the more I try to force them back into the light, the quicker they slip away. Sand through a sieve.

It is more than writer's block. It is me, the man I am inside.

When I look back at who I was when I took this position, I feel it was John Smith who was a story, a bleak and lonely man who lived only in his dreams. The Doctor's adventures were more real to me than anything I could encounter at this school, in this job. I went through the motions of daily life without joy and hid from the world in my imagination, like a child.

Not anymore.

Now I am real. My life has purpose. And I have no more need for my curious Doctor and his stolen box. I have left the nursery, and my crutch, behind.

I shall write to the magazine this evening and express my apologies. With Joan in my heart and dreams of our future to warm my soul, there is no room left in me for fantasy. For now, this story of Shada will remain unfinished. But not forever. No… I couldn't leave it forever. Perhaps in a few years… It would make a beautiful bedtime story.

Another dream, John. But perhaps, this time, a dream that may come true…

John Smith  
Journal of Impossible Things


	12. The Year That Will Come and Editor's Final Notes

The Year That Will Come

I woke tonight from a nightmare, the likes of which I have not experienced since the days before Joan.

Is it because I abandoned the Doctor? Is my mind so weak that it calls out for its crutch, even now? Or is this dark dream an expression of a deeper fear?

When I dreamed of Daleks and metal men, there was always a sense that, somehow, relief would come. That there would be a rescue. A daring knight in Chucks and pinstripes would appear on the scene, or a brave young woman with tears of compassion shining in eyes thickly rimmed with black make-up. But this time… No knight appeared. There was only me, trembling and alone with my fears.

A war waits on the horizon. I have seen it in my mind, clearer than my memory of my childhood home in Nottingham. Its roots are deep, feeding off the tensions of the last century, tensions in which nationalism has been trampled and ethnicities scorned by bloated Empire. Two shots from the turbulent Balkans will set off the War to End All Wars. And it is we who live in this decade who shall be called upon to fight. We academics, and the boys here at this school. Our students are still so young, but they will heed the call to fight, to kill. The call to die.

But is that not the point? To get them while they're young, when they still think firing guns is a schoolyard game and the responsibilities of mature adulthood have not yet been set upon them? War, to them, will be a great and terrible adventure. But what of me? I am not young, but nor am I old. If my country calls, could I fire? Extinguish the life of a man with the pull of a trigger?

Somehow, I don't believe that I could. Just forcing myself to imagine it… No. I come out a coward every time. There has to be another way, should always be another way…

But there is more to this nightmare than the brutality of aging politicians and petty states and the heartrending naiveté of a nation's young soldiers. Within my dream, there is another threat, looming larger even than the threat of global war.

An enemy is nearing, insubstantial, gaseous. They call themselves The Family. A Family of Blood.

They come seeking immortality. The lives of a Time Lord. And if they succeed, the war of the coming year will be nothing compared to the war that will rage across the stars. War, for every child. And where is the Doctor, the one man who understands these creatures well enough to bring their reign of terror to an end? Trapped in my mind, in time, in the workings of a well-worn watch.

This dream feels like a warning, as if someone or something is calling upon me to act. But act how? I am no Time Lord, no alien genius. Alas, my reaction to this nightmare has made it clear that I am all too human. And this Family of Blood cannot be real. How can a man be called upon to fight a green cloud?

It must be a metaphor. The green cloud that represents the Family is the coming war. And those I saw fall to it—the cleaning girl who has befriended my maid, Martha; a student of mine, Jeremy Baines; the young Cartwright girl…

This quiet town will not be spared. Possibly no town will escape unscathed.

But our nation will survive. The British have always been a stubborn and hardy people and we have weathered war and invasion before. As for this dream, it is just that. A dream. I need to put it behind me and think, not of the hazy days to come, but of the present.

Joan has bought a new dress for the dance tonight. It will be a joy to have this opportunity to see her shed her professional face and enjoy herself as a lovely woman. This will be our first time out in public as a couple, but rather than the nerves and anxiety I would have expected to feel being confronted by a social function like this, I feel only pride. With Joan on my arm, I shall be the envy of every man in town-something quite new to me. My Joan and I have both known such loneliness in our lives. Now, my only wish is to be there for her, with her, until we are both old and gray and still dancing together in our hearts.

And now I have classes to teach. Work before play, as my mother Verity often said. Although, if I let the boys out just a little early this afternoon, who will be the wiser?

 

EDITOR'S NOTE:  
This was the final entry in John Smith's Journal, and one of the most curious. For example, it is odd that Smith would describe his 'Doctor' character as "a daring knight in Chucks and pinstripes" when in fact the first Chuck Taylor All-Stars basketball shoe would not be produced until 1917. It is also strangely prescient of Smith to note that World War I would be triggered by "two shots from the turbulent Balkans." It was indeed two shots fired from the gun of a young Bosnian Serb nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, that ended the lives of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife Sophie, setting off the chain of events that led to the outbreak of war in the summer of 1914.

Smith could not have known this, of course, and these observations have sparked a great deal of controversy regarding the actual authorship of his Journal. Some academics have argued that it was not Smith but Joan Redfern who penned this text, some years after the war. This argument relies heavily on a small, rather bitter notation in Joan's own handwriting located on the very last page. It reads "My dearest John. Know that the flawed, invented man was better than the hero."

Some have tried to make the case that Smith himself was an invention dreamed up by Joan, another impossible story in a journal of impossible things, but this has not been borne out. There are records that show a John Smith was employed as a teacher at the Hulton Academy for Boys in 1913. He remained there only a few months, but the time period does correspond to the dates in the Journal, and the signature on his contract is a match for the handwriting of the Journal's author. Interviews with former students at the school, including decorated veteran Timothy Latimer, also prove Smith's reality. What no one could satisfactorily explain, however, was why Smith chose to leave the school (and his journal) so suddenly-particularly if his feelings for Joan were as strong as his writing indicates-or where he may have ended up afterward.

Joan's reference to the 'flawed, invented man' has led to some speculation that Smith was on the run from a complicated past-a past that required him to hide his true identity from the Hulton Academy that employed him. This idea would explain some of the stranger passages in his Journal, particularly his nightmare about possessing many different faces. The argument has been put forward that Smith was in actuality an Irish nationalist from a small, now-vanished rural town called Gallifrey. He'd come to the Hulton Academy to escape his political enemies, but these enemies caught up with him the night of the dance, killing several of the townspeople and forcing Smith into even deeper hiding.

According to the town newspapers, there was an attack against Smith on the night of the dance, but the ringleader seems to have been a student under the influence of powerful narcotics, not any politically-motivated group. The rumored town of Gallifrey has never been located in Ireland or elsewhere.

In the end, what can we make of the mysterious John Smith and his Journal of Impossible Things? The problem raises more questions than it answers. Was Smith an Irish freedom fighter run to ground by his enemies and forced to flee his new life and his new love? Was he the invention of a lonely widowed nurse? Or was he just an uncannily prescient man victimized by a troubled and violent student? The truth about John Smith's identity may never be known. But his stories remain a source of curiosity and wonder to scholars and readers alike, as well as a unique window into the daily life of a small British boy's school in the days before World War I.

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed my story. Thanks for reading, and for your feedback! I really appreciate it! :)


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